Memory

What goes through your mind when you wake up each morning? Do you consider what happened yesterday, try to determine what you have to get done today, or perhaps think about the people in your life? What if you could only remember events for a few seconds? How do you think your thought processes would differ each morning if your life changed in this way?

In your journal, compose a four to five sentence paragraph that answers each of the questions above. If you need assistance writing a journal entry, please visit the Developmental module for more information.

One you have completed your journal entry, please save it with the file name of mod6_memory and submit it to the journal dropbox.

Now that you have thought about memories you awake to, take a moment to consider “the man with a thirty-second memory,” and compare his life to yours. In 1985, Clive Wearing contracted a virus that caused encephalitis, or swelling in his brain, which damaged his hippocampus. As a result, Wearing’s memory now lasts between seven and thirty seconds, and he is known as the man with the worst case of amnesia ever documented. Every day, Wearing says he feels that he is “waking up” several times a minute, which is because his consciousness is essentially rebooting. When Wearing writes in his journal, he constantly makes statements like “I am now FULLY awake,” or “I have been dead until NOW.” Wearing knows he has children and loves his wife, but that is the extent of his memory prior to having brain damage. Before Wearing’s amnesia, he was a conductor, tenor, and keyboardist. Ironically, because his muscle memory did not become damaged by the virus, Wearing can still play the piano perfectly.